Saturday, May 30, 2015

Got to play a special game today in the man cave with *the* Andrew (Andy) Thompson - a longtime friend who is visiting sunny California from far away Scotland with his lovely wife Christine. Adam Clark and Roy Scaife joined us for a great game of Muskets & Tomahawks.

I used a 6' by 6' setup for this game that you can see below.

Most importantly, we used a modified version of the M&T rules aimed at speeding up our games. Since we mostly play large games we found that our games would regularly run 5-6 hours. By modifying the rules a bit we successfully played out this large game in around 3-4 hours. Below is a brief summary of the modifications.

Modified M&T Summary

Movement for regulars and others troop types that move 4" increased to 6" per action.

Movement for irregulars/Indians that move 6" increased to 9" per action.

Formed (firing line/regulars) troops moving completely on a road get +2" per movement action.

Officer only - new action "command" - may pass their actions to a friendly unit within 6" - no single unit can receive more than 1 action this way per activation.

Officer only - new action "rally" - may spend an action to attempt to rally a "flighted" unit within 6" - the unit takes a reaction test and immediately applies the new result.

Spotting only is done against hidden units. Completely new simplified spotting table/roll.

360 degree LOS for all skirmishing units.

Weapon ranges increased slightly (e.g. musket from 24" to 30").

I adjusted the unit entries for the British and French army lists and I created a QRS to track the new changes. Pictures of all of these are below (I did them in MS PowerPoint). I have to say that the modifications worked very well ... the game still essentially works the same but plays through much faster and is just as deadly.

The Game

So, with these new rules updates in hand we set off to play our game. Both Adam and Andy had not played M&T before so Roy/Adam took on the British forces and Andy/I took on the French forces.

British objective: Raid the settlement. Kill civilians and burn buildings if possible.

British sub plot: A group of Indian allies and two important daughters of a colonel at Fort William Henry are being pursued by the French, intercept them and escort them to safety. For this, the unit of Uncas, Hawkeye, Chingachgook, Cora and Alice Munro start "hidden" with two additional dummy markers. They also have a 4+ "fate" save when kills are inflicted and do not take reaction tests.

French objective: Protect the settlement and evacuate the civilians.

French sub plot: Magua is closing in on white hair's daughters. He must find them and put them under the knife, along with anyone trying to protect them. Spot the hidden markers to locate which one is the fleeing daughters.

The French deployed 15" in on 1/2 of the table nearest the settlement. The British deployed opposite, 15" in across the entire side. Three hidden markers (one ambush, two dummy) had to be deployed 24" in on the opposite 1/2 of the french deployment area.

The game ended in a French victory with a completed subplot. It took many Indian units and lots of melee but Magua put the daughters under the knife. Most, not all but most civilians were evacuated. Both sides suffered major losses ... around 45 for the French and 56 for the British.

Lots of pictures below show the action!

This crossroads cost the French many regulars butthey held it and eventually pushed the British back.

The VIPs are spotted but are near friendly forces.

The rules modifications work out very well. I think we'll keep using these moving forward and make any tweaks as necessary but I don't foresee any changes at this point in time.

Monday, May 25, 2015

This past weekend I attended KublaCon. I had a great time, getting there early on Friday and gaming through to Sunday evening. A large contingent of us wargamers went: Roy Scaife, John Lantz, Dan Kerrick, Adam Clark, Craig Hunter, Eammon Glass and longtime friend all the way from Scotland Andy Thompson and his wife Christine.

We played Bolt Action, Chain of Command, Black Powder, Skirmish Sangin and much more. Tons of pictures below of the different games.

A long post with A TON of pictures ... you have been warned :-)

First up, John Lantz ran his Bolt Action game. This was an eastern front engagement between some SS and Russians during Kursk. He ran the game two times in a row with lots of gamers showing up to play and have fun.

I played in a Chain of Command game that Adam Clark and Andy Thompson ran - another Germans on Russians game. The Russians had stop a German train and we fought around the train. Adam's train is a work of art. A combination of custom laser cutting and meticulous attention to detail (the rivets on the passenger car for example). Just awesome.

Roy Scaife and I ran the Salamanca Black Powder Napoleonics game on Saturday morning with a full compliment of gamers signed up to play. This was by far the best game of this scenario we had - it was close, with the British pulling off a minor victory at the end, but a total blood bath with a lot of aggressive moves and combat throughout the game. This was the first game where I got to use the new 3.5" dirt roads from The Flying Pig Terrain - along with the new 3.5" to 2" dirt road connector.

Dan Kerrick from our group worked hard to get a modern Afganistan game up and running for the convention. We played our first game using Skirmish Sangin. In this scenario a blackhawk has crashed and the British forces near the site must get to the chopper and rescue the crew before the Taliban can loot the chopper and kill the crew. An AH-64 was on hand to provide air support, but was bingo fuel and had to depart after only a few combat phases. The British manged to get to the chopper before the Taliban. Another game using The Flying Pig Terrain products - the 3.5" roads (desert) and the river/ford.

Adam Clark ran his VERY impressive Arnhem Chain of Command game using his 20 foot bridge. This was truly a site to behold. Adam also laser cut custom Chain of Command vehicle tracking cards (since there were so many vehicles used for the game). The Germans managed a victory here as they managed to exit several vehicles off the end of the board.

Matt ran his Brother Against Brother AWI game. Always an impressive looking layout and fun time with Matt's games. He had a full crowd as usual. Matt is using the 2" dirt roads here from The Flying Pig Terrain.

Below is a selection of pictures from other games run throughout the weekend. I setup my Dead Man's Hand game, a large game of Zombicide, an impressive "3D" version of Shadow's Over Camelot, 20mm WW2 in the snow, Matt's French Foreign Legion game, and so on.

So that is it, another KublaCon under my belt. I hope you enjoyed all the pictures.